In Which Sebastian Moran is a Strong Independent Sniper
by MidnightFlyte
Summary: ... Who Doesn't Need Feelings. In which Sebastian is not depressed, or in love, or a teenage girl with a blog, a cat, and a diary. He isn't married, either. Angst, turns to snarky fluff. Cursing and insinuations of sex.


Sebastian Moran was not depressed. He was just busy.

It had been two months since Jim had blown his brains out on the top of St. Bart's, and a month and two weeks of running a criminal empire that stretched all over Europe. There were officers to bribe, schemes to plan, bodies to dispose of and money to manage.

There were also things to not think about, like Jim. Or how he spent the first two weeks after Reichenbach in an alcohol-induced haze, cursing everything that reminded him of the consulting criminal. (Which meant that quite a few sharply dressed, clean-shaven businessmen were sworn at by a man who they assumed was a common drunkard.) For two weeks, he slouched alone in bars, getting as drunk as he possibly could.

Which, judging from the size of his headache when he woke up on the morning of the third week, was _very_. _Never again_, he told himself. _There are easier ways to die, and you have a job to do, so you are going to man the fuck up and _do _it._

So he did. And, for a month and a half, things went well. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke—much—he kept the empire under control. People wouldn't kill themselves, after all, and somebody needed to make sure that the empire stayed above the waterline.

The snapping point was the graffiti near St. Bart's. He had gone there to make sure that the rather dense record-keeper hadn't decided to start selling out information (no, he was not a _girl _about going there, if Jim wanted to kill himself then he very fucking well could, Sebastian did not give two fucks in hell), and he happened to take the back door in. The graffiti had been painted on the brick wall of the building across the street. It was done in bright yellow letters that had a bubble-like shape, allowing them to be filled in with an even brighter green.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes_, the graffiti read. Sebastian took one look at it, made a sharp turn left, and proceeded to forget the record keeper, St. Bart's in general, and his name in the nearest bar. The next morning, he deleted Jim's contact from his phone and proceeded to burn everything in the house with the criminal's name (or alias) on it. The latter didn't take as long as he thought it would.

He also put all of his rifles into a box, locked the box, and threw the key into the Thames. Now that he ran an empire, there was simply no _time _for him to shoot. He missed the solitude, the moonlit nights, but he just couldn't bring himself to pick up a rifle again. (And no, they didn't remind him of Jim. _Fuck off_.)

He stayed off of the alcohol for another four months. He moved back into 219c, simply because he paid the rent anyway and it was a good place to hunker down in. Besides, most of the time quite a bit of his business was in the nearby financial district.

Six months to the day after Reichenbach, he looked out of the ground floor's window to see Sherlock Bloody Bastard Holmes on the doorstep of 221. Instead of leaving for the meeting he had at seven, he stepped closer to the window, curious. The consulting detective knocked on the door (_What? Did he forget his keys?_) and shoved his hands into his pockets, waiting.

The door opened, and Sebastian Moran observed the fastest transition of complete befuddlement to anger to … was John's face turning red? Moran smirked. Maybe this heart attack would kill the detective, save him the trouble.

He had been planning to shoot Watson for a while now, to end the whole damn game. But now, with the detective back … there were loose strings. Moran frowned.

And then he realized something. Holmes and Watson were going to go back to running around London solving crimes like something out of a child's telly show. And Jim still had his brains blown out on the rooftop of St. Bart's.

_Fuck you, Jim Moriarty._

Moran missed his meeting that day. And all of his meetings for the next two days. He spent those missing days in a bar, getting drunk and watching the football games. He chose the bar because it was the only one _not _going on about the return of Sherlock Bloody Bastard Holmes.

Actually, scratch that. He chose the bar because he wanted to get blind stinkin' drunk and watch some fucking football, fuck you very much. Never mind that he spent most of the time staring into his beer and cursing Sherlock Bloody Bastard Holmes and John Bloody Dwarf-Thing Watson and Jim Fucking Stupid Show-Off Moriarty, all of whom needed to get the hell out of his life.

He stopped the downward spiral after the third day. Well, rather, the bartender did. And she chose a rather ice-cold bucket of water to do so.

"Look, mate, it isn't my business if you want to kill yourself or not," she said after dousing him with the bucket of freezing tap water, with a thick Scottish accent. "Just do it somewhere else, eh? You're scaring off business."

Were Sebastian more sober, he would have sarcastically inquired as to how a man in a three-day old suit, covered in stubble, and barely as tall as Johnny Depp posed any sort of threat at the first glance. However, he wasn't more sober. He stumbled out of the bar, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of the worn leather jacket that he'd had ever since he left the Army—had it been seven years already?—and nearly bumped into John Watson chumming it up with Sherlock Holmes.

_Fuck. _He sobered a little at the sight of the doctor and the detective, and quickly walked around the block, making sure that they couldn't see him before slipping back to 219c, making sure that his feet made no sound on the pavement.

The next six months became a game. _How long can I stay hidden? _He had played this game in Afghanistan, aiming his rifle at troops of soldiers and seeing how many commanding officers he could drop before his spotter gave him the "time to move" signal.

And later, in India, he had played that game as he slipped through the sewer tunnels, holding tightly to a length of pipe as he tracked a tiger that had made off with a couple of kids, leaving only the blood-drenched clothes and bones as memorabilia.

So he played the hunter, silent and watchful. He took to looking over his shoulder and leaving early, making sure to turn the corner whenever he saw the familiar gray coat of the detective in the vicinity.

The empire progressed miraculously well. He made plans to talk to the Yakuza sometime in December about the smuggling of goods from Imperial Japan to Britain via China, along with the other things being brought into Britain from China. He started cracking down on the local criminal organizations—expanding was pointless unless everything in London was under complete control.

He took his guns out of the locked box, smashing the lock with a hammer. This earned him an odd look from Mrs. Turner, but he just told her it was a cousin's, given to him as a present-slash-practical joke. He took up firing at the range again, and was not disappointed with his aiming skills. The nine-month hiatus didn't rob him of his skills; it just made him a bit rusty.

He started making his own kills. Nothing stupid, he could always get goons to do that. But the ones that Jim (_fuck_, no, not Jim, _not fucking Jim_) would have him do—the important ones, the heads of corporations. The ones that had to be done in the middle of the night, up to a mile away, because security was so tight. The _challenges_.

One day in late September, he paused on his way back in from getting groceries to look at himself in the reflective pane of the window.

He hadn't changed much since the Fall (and he did _not _think about that, ever, _fuck off_). His hair was still the same shade of brown, and it was still just a few weeks away from shaggy. He hadn't gotten any taller (which, in his mind, was unfortunate. People expected the "most dangerous man in London" to be six feet tall, blond, and built like a tank. He just looked like a lawyer.) but he hadn't gotten any shorter, either. Still no beard (and yes, he did shave, and no, it wasn't because Jim didn't like stubble. Stubble happened to be rather uncomfortable after living for a while without it.)

Sebastian Moran shrugged and walked into the flat, carrying the groceries.

On the next day, the morning of September 27th, he woke up to find himself lying on his stomach, right arm wrapped around the waist of none other than Jim Moriarity. Sharing a bed with a dead man.

Well. Not exactly _dead_. Jim was still breathing, even if his breath was slowed by sleep, and he was still warm. And soft, but Sebastian didn't notice that because he didn't think about people like they were bloody teddy bears.

"Oh, hi Jim," he muttered, before falling back asleep. He didn't have a meeting scheduled until three, he could afford to nap. Besides, this was comfortable. Jim hadn't been home for almost a year now.

That was when the adrenaline kicked in, waking him up for good. _Jim?! You fucking Irish bastard! You're dead! _Moran scrambled out of the bed, landed uncomfortably on the floor, pulled himself up to his knees, grabbed the Glock from its position under the bed, and aimed it at Jim's head. "I don't know who you are, or what you—"

"'Bastian, stop being so _predictable _and get back over here. I'm cold." Same accent, same disdain—it was pure Jim. (And no, Sebastian did _not _come close to choking up because of how much he missed Jim. Because he didn't miss Jim. Because Jim was an asshole who decided to blow his brains out to prove how terribly clever he was. And also dead.)

Moran, already standing, had climbed halfway back into the bed before he decided to point this out to both of them. "You're dead."

"What did I say about being predictable?" Jim turned over so he was lying on his back and pulled himself up to a semi-seated position, propping himself up with his elbows. "Boring. You. In. Bed."

Wordlessly, Sebastian laid in on the bed and fell back asleep, his arm around Jim's shoulders. Which was just where it happened to fall, because it wasn't like he wanted to hold onto Jim.

… Okay, maybe he did. But he just needed to make sure that that complete _asshole _didn't sneak off and kill himself again. And the temperature had decided to drop. Body heat happened to be one of the cheapest methods of staying warm.

Jim, who had no inhibitions whatsoever with physical contact, promptly slid so close to Sebastian that he laid just about directly underneath him and dozed off again.

When they both woke up, it was just before noon. Sebastian climbed out of bed, more slowly this time, showered, dressed, and headed to the small kitchen (read: fridge, stove, sink, and microwave crammed into an alcove) to make breakfast. Or lunch.

Jim padded out of the bedroom/bathroom area a little while later and sat down at the small table that still had two chairs only because Sebastian couldn't be bothered to throw out one of them. "You moved back here? Interesting. Would have thought that you would have picked a safe house."

Sebastian looked at him, critically assessing. A good bit of his hair had grown back, but he was skinnier than when they had first met and there were huge dark circles under his eyes. He had shaved, but not recently. He was wearing a worn pair of blue jeans and a gray t-shirt. In short, he looked completely normal. Not "Jim from IT," not "Jim the average businessman," but just "Jim." The kind of guy that anybody would pass on the street without thinking twice about, unless to make a snide remark about how some people just _really_ needed to eat a cheeseburger.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Jim raised an eyebrow. Sebastian squinted. The bastard still had time to pluck his fucking eyebrows, but he didn't eat? Utterly hopeless. He reached into the fridge, grabbed the carton of eggs, started cracking eggs into a bowl. "Jim! What the _fuck_?"

"Sebastian."

One word was all that was needed to convey to the sniper Jim's displeasure with his use of obscenities. Sebastian's shoulder's stiffened as he beat the eggs with a fork, swirling together the yolks and the whites with extreme prejudice. "You disappear for almost a _year_, you _blow your bloody brains out_; you don't even tell me! And then you show up like everything is fucking dandy!" He turned on one of the gas jets on the stove and held a lit match to it; when the flame caught, he put a skillet on the lit burner.

"Well, you had the empire under control. I had to keep a low profile in order to get Mycroft off my back." Jim shrugged, like this explained everything. Like Sebastian hadn't spent nights staring up at the ceiling, watching and waiting. And wondering.

Because he hadn't, of course. He wasn't a fluffy, oversensitive teen-aged girl. (That was Jim, when he had too much sugar or decided that it would be interesting to watch Moran's reaction to his insane mood swings.)

"And, 'Bastian, really, I'm shocked." Jim raised his eyebrows, but the gesture was lost on Sebastian, who was greasing a skillet on the stove. "You didn't ask how I did it."

"I don't care." Sebastian dumped the eggs into the skillet, topped them with some chopped onions and peppers that he had stored in the fridge for about three days, and grabbed a spatula from where it was stored in the cupboard. "Speaking of not caring, guess who made an appearance six bloody months ago?"

"The Virgin."

"The Virgin." Sebastian flipped the eggs over and let them cook while he pulled out a large plate from the cupboard that housed the spatula. He closed his eyes for a second, rested his head on the cupboard door, and took a deep breath in. "Jim Moriarty, for the love of everything holy, _why did you not tell me that you weren't dead_?"

"The eggs are burning, love."

Sebastian gave Jim a scathing look and turned the flame off on the stove. After moving the eggs to the plate, he grabbed the salt and pepper shakers in one hand, holding them between his fingers. Carrying the plate with one hand along with a couple of forks that he stuck into the eggs so they wouldn't fall all over the floor, he walked over to the table. He set the plate in the middle and glared at Jim.

They finished the eggs in the same quiet silence that would permeate the flat on the quieter days before Reichenbach. When there were no eggs left on the plate, Sebastian grabbed Jim's wrists, noting for a second how Jim's bones dug into the flesh of his palms, and pinned them to the table, leaning in so the consulting criminal could see the steel in his eyes—steel that carried itself over to his voice. "You. Are going. To talk."

"Fine, fine." Jim heaved a sigh. "I was in Russia for six months, which was rather unpleasant, Dublin for three, which was much better, and I've been causing Mycroft no small amount of trouble for the past … two and a half months."

"How lovely. And you didn't think to _call me_?" Fuck, he sounded like a girl.

"Because if I called you, you wouldn't have made any _stupid _decisions like trying to _look for me_, would you, sweetheart." The sarcasm dripped off of Jim's tongue. "And by _looking for me_, which I would have specifically told you _not to do_, you wouldn't just _throw the empire under the bloody trolley_, would you."

Sebastian didn't say anything.

"Which is why I didn't call," Jim said. "Now hurry up or you'll be late for your meeting." He kissed Sebastian lightly on the cheek and shoved at his shoulders, an unspoken command to get up and go.

Sebastian was half-way out the door before he realized that Jim hadn't told him how he faked his death or even why he decided it was necessary. He went through the meeting in a state of confusion, trying to piece two and two together and come up with something _other _than five.

When he came back home that night, Jim was still there, wearing one of the suits that Sebastian couldn't be bothered to throw out (because it cost a fucking bank and a half, not because it reminded him of Jim or anything, he wasn't a girl) but also couldn't donate to charity (because who the hell donated Westwood suits, really, that would draw unnecessary attention to him). Sebastian was a second way from a heart attack when he saw Jim, barely any different from the way he looked almost a year ago.

"I take it that you want an explanation," Jim said. No "hello," but then again, he didn't bother much with small talk.

"No," Moran said sarcastically, "I want a puppy." When Jim rolled his eyes, Moran's tone changed, from sarcastic to enraged. "Of course I want an explanation, Jim, you bloody ass, you can't just run off for a _year _and have everybody think that you're dead and—"

And then Jim gave him something better to do with his mouth than rant, so there wasn't much actual _conversation _going on for a while.

The next morning he was up at five thirty, like usual. _Okay, time to try this again_. He blinked. Jim was still very much still in bed, his hair mussed beyond belief. _Not a dream, then, unless I'm in some sort of coma. _

He shrugged before showering and dressing in a pair of loose sweats and a T-shirt. By some coincidence, he didn't have any meetings scheduled, which was unusual for a Friday but not unheard of. As he opened the fridge door, his stomach decided to remind him that he was too … preoccupied … to eat dinner yesterday by snarling like a rabid beast.

He grabbed the carton of eggs again. Eggs were the easiest dish to make in the morning, and something that both of them liked. As he cracked the eggs into a bowl to mix together, he heard the shower running.

_How the hell did my life go from this, to Reichenbach, back to this? _Sebastian Moran was not one for introspection. (Because he wasn't a fucking teenage girl with a diary and feelings, thank you very much.) Being in the army did that, and deserting sealed his feelings in a small box and burned it. But even _this _was a little surreal for him.

As he sliced tomatoes and diced peppers for the omelet, he realized that, based on the food missing in the fridge, that Jim had remembered to eat yesterday—thank _fuck_. Jim could go (and had went) days without eating if something he felt "important" kept him interested.

Speaking of the devil, Jim padded into the kitchen area, his bare feet silent on the floor, while Sebastian sliced leftover chicken thin, wearing a pair of Sebastian's jeans and the white shirt that he had on yesterday—now significantly more wrinkled from a night spent on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian counted the number of buttons on the shirt. There were none missing, thank goodness. He didn't put it past Jim to kick him to the couch only a day after being not-dead.

"Well, that was eventful." Jim smirked. "Missed me?"

"You're the one who kept the dog tags," Sebastian said pointedly, heating up the same skillet that must have cleaned itself overnight, because he could count on one hand the number of times that Jim had done the dishes. He kept quiet while he made the omelet, and only when it was on the plate and they were both at the table did he speak to Jim.

"And now you talk." It was not a request or a question.

"Fine, fine." Jim sighed and rolled his eyes. "I thought you would stop caring—it's rather dull." Seeing that Sebastian's facial expression hadn't changed, he continued. "A blank in the gun, a blood packet in the back of the head. Easy."

"And the body. You showed up in the papers, you know."

"Of _course _I showed up in the papers," Jim said, taking a forkful of omelet, chewing and swallowing before replying. "I read the papers. I paid our person in the hospital to not mention it to you."

"You absolute bastard."

Jim kissed him. "You know you love me, 'Bastian. Now. You don't have any plans for today, which is good. We need to reconfigure the empire."

Sebastian nodded and focused his attention on the omelet as Jim talked, mentally recording every word.

"Mycroft is on to us, obviously. That man has his nose in the same business as I do, so it's only a matter of time before we bump into each other. When we do, everything needs to be stacked to our advantage. So we make ourselves indispensable. We scale down on the outside business; we focus on the consulting. We pull off a complete takeover of the London underground. All the mobs and all the Families need to have the name 'Moriarty' on their head in big red letters. We secure London, we move on to the rest of England before complete resumption of foreign trade." Jim picked at the omelet some more. "Got it, dear?"

"Of course. Sounds worthwhile." Sebastian thought while he chewed. "We're going to need more infantry." _Infantry_—their name for the snipers, bodyguards, assassins, and interrogators. "Won't be as much of a need for the bribing of officials high up in the government, if we're scaling back on importing."

"Yes."

"I think it'll work," Moran finished. "You're a genius." A statement of fact, not a compliment. "Where do you want me to go today?" And with that sentence, he was back in his position of foot soldier, ready to follow Jim's instructions.

"Today?" Jim laughed. "Oh, no, 'Bastian. Today we're watching Sherlock." He pushed his chair back to allow him to stand up and leave the main room where the little table was. "You see, his dear older brother has his apartment bugged. And I think it will be absolutely _fascinating _to see what the Virgin does in his spare time." His voice carried behind him as he retrieved Sebastian's laptop from their bedroom.

Sebastian rolled his eyes. "I'll make popcorn."

Uncharacteristically, Jim was completely fine with doing the same thing all day—that is, creeping on Sherlock Bloody Holmes. He set up the laptop on the table where they ate breakfast (after Sebastian removed the plate), dragged the table over to where it would be closer to the sofa, shoved Sebastian onto the worn brown leather sofa, and started live-streaming 221b Baker Street.

He took extensive notes about Sherlock's experiments on his mobile phone, tried to start a drinking game (one shot for every time Sherlock said talked about how bored he was, one shot for a disgusted expression resulting from Sherlock's experiments, and two shots if Sherlock ended up using a nicotine patch or put an extra one on) but was unable to due to the lack of alcohol in the flat. Oh, and he threw popcorn at the screen whenever John and Sherlock decided to discuss anything, yelling "Get a room!" and other similar comments.

Sebastian spent the majority of the day rolling his eyes at Jim and keeping a close watch on Sherlock's experiments (they seemed interesting, perhaps he could stage a break-in sometime…). At around six, he gave up trying to keep his cool and shut the laptop. "I will make dinner," he told Jim, "and then we will go out and freaking _do something_."

Sebastian Moran found that staying in the same place for over three hours torturous. And horrifically dull, but that sounded like something Jim would say. Of course, he didn't just come out and _say _this, because confessing any sort of weakness around Moriarty was suicidal, but he did leave no room for argument when he asked Jim, "A walk sound nice?"

"Walk sounds lovely, babe," Jim said, scrolling through the notes he had accumulated over the day. "Walk to the park?"

"Wherever. Fine." Sebastian prepared a beef-broccoli-and-ramen stir fry with the speed of one in a state of great anticipation, moving the table back to its place against the wall while the large pot that he used to fry the food warmed.

They sat down to dinner a short while later, knees touching at the small table. Sebastian leaned his forehead against Jim's for a moment, took a slow breath in and memorized all the smells—Jim's soap, shampoo (and was the little fucker wearing cologne?), and the smell of dinner. _Yes_, he thought, _I could live like this_. But not without knowing some things first. "Why did you come back?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Got bored." Jim leaned away from Sebastian. "Missed you." Sebastian shrugged.

"How did you travel around without using the cards?" The Moriarty cards, no matter what alias they were under, would have linked back to the empire's expenses, where Sebastian would have seen them.

Jim snorted. "Escorted to Russia by their government—they needed me for work—in a plane, hitch-hiked my way through Europe to get to France, picked up some false ID there, plane to Ireland. Stayed up in North Dublin for a while—lovely place, that, got bored, plane to here, let myself in. Yes, I kept the keys," he said in response to Sebastian's un-asked question. "Now can we talk about something not so _boring_?"

Sebastian didn't say anything for the rest of the meal, but he did hold the door open for Jim on the way out of the flat. They climbed up the stairs and walked out into the cloudy, bustling city that was London at night. They somehow ended up holding hands. (No, Sebastian was _not _holding Jim's hand. Jim was holding _his _hand. Yes, there was a difference.)

They wandered through the park, neither of them saying much. When they got back to 219c, Sebastian held both doors open for Jim, who just raised his eyebrows and snickered a little. "You're going soft, 'Bastian."

"Shut. Up. Jim."

Sebastian went out on a job that night, and when he came back home, slept until one in the afternoon.

Saturday afternoon commenced with sheets of rain hitting the ground viciously, the sky a dark gray. Sebastian Moran pulled himself out of bed, and went through the routine of showering and dressing—in a pair of jeans clean enough and cut in such a way as to imply business, but warm enough to wear comfortably, and one of his three thick black T-shirts. Seeing the rain, he pulled on an old college sweatshirt that he had somehow ran into when clearing out the house that his deceased father had owned.

While making breakfast, he took stock of the refrigerator's contents. They were rapidly depleting, seeing as he now had to cook for two, instead of one, and staying home for a whole day didn't do any marvels for conserving food. The week's supply of groceries was almost gone, with only a few eggs, a tomato, some strawberries (that looked dubious when Sebastian picked them up and decided to grow mold in the fridge) and a few sandwich rolls left over from Sebastian's trip out on Wednesday.

Jim walked out of the bedroom in a suit just in time to sit down to hard-boiled-egg-and-tomato sandwiches.

"We're running low on groceries," Sebastian told him. "And I think today is the day I talk to some of the shops around the neighborhood about the protection money. It's Saturday, right?"

"Saturday," Jim said around a mouthful of sandwich. "Right." He swallowed his mouthful of sandwich. "I have meetings in the financial district today. Phase one, legal section of the takeover," he elaborated. "I should get going." He left the flat still carrying the sandwich.

Sebastian got up to wash the dirty dishes that had accumulated. _Back to business._

He went out for the groceries, picking up a bottle of wine as well—shit, he only drank too much when he had serious life problems (no, not feelings) and he didn't have serious life problems now, so why the hell not?—before going to the shops and informing them that if they didn't want to have their windows (and limbs) broken, it would be a wise idea to forward all protection money towards the Moriarty empire, effective immediately.

Jim called while he finished up this rather tedious but not unpleasant business. He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket, held it to his ear.

"Hey, babe."

"I'm watching you on the CCTV. You have a tail. The Virgin and Pet." Jim's voice was slightly amused.

"Yes, I know." He had noticed them when he came out of the Verizon shop. "Do you want me to do something?"

"No, not today. Too obvious." Jim's sigh, a burst of static, conveyed his disdain for all things mundane and indicative of the panic that permeated the lives of normal people. "They're tailing you, watching you talk. Think they know what you're saying?"

"If they are, then I would expect it…" Sebastian wasn't sure where Jim wanted to pursue this topic. Probably nowhere that would be legal, moral, or pleasant in any sense of the word.

"Phone sex? Meeting's over." Sometimes he hated being right.

"_No_, you—"

"Language, 'Bastian." Jim's sing-song tone didn't change a bit over the phone. Sebastian sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Look, where are you? I'll swing by …"

"Left turn, five blocks, wait on the corner. I want to make sure I'm not followed."

"Oh, fine, then. See you." Sebastian terminated the call and slipped his phone into his pocket before turning left and heading into the bustling financial district.

Jim showed up a little while later, holding an umbrella. Sebastian rolled his eyes. "Babe, you're over-reacting. It's _rain_. It happens _every day_, and you look fuckin' ridiculous with that umbrella."

Jim rolled his eyes and kissed Sebastian on the cheek lightly, just to make him uncomfortable. "Westwood, Sebastian."

And no, Sebastian was _not _going soft. He just put his arm around Jim's shoulder so they would take up less space, which would mean that the umbrella wouldn't drip on him.

They walked back to 219c slowly, talking over the Underground Takeover (Jim's name for it). Sebastian needed to focus on the maintenance of the most important foreign connections while knocking off local competition.

"But how did everybody react to your miraculous resurrection?" Sebastian asked, as they neared 219c.

Jim snickered. "Typical for sheep. 'Oh, we're so glad to see you, Mr. Moriarty!' 'We've kept your accounts in order, Mr. Moriarty!'" He mimicked the shocked tone of the bank employees.

Sebastian smirked. "I'm surprised that you didn't tell them that you were the Savior and that the end of days was nigh."

This sent Jim into a small chuckling fit. "Didn't think of it, to be honest. Guess I'll have to try it with the Italians tomorrow."

"Italians? Jim, you're bloody nuts. They'll try to gut you in a heartbeat." Sebastian pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door, holding it open for Jim.

Jim shrugged. "You'll be there. Next week Tuesday. And what did you do with the certificate?"

It took Sebastian a moment to comprehend what Jim meant. "The Wasserlauf-Brook?" (No, he didn't say _marriage_, because it was a bloody civil partnership, and saying "civil partnership" made them sound like a couple of old ladies with cats.) Jim nodded impatiently.

"I um. Two months after. Um. Shit. I burned it." Jim just blinked. "I'm sorry."

Sebastian Moran did not apologize unless he knew that he had fucked something up big-time. He had just fucked something up big-time, he could tell that by the utter lack of emotion on Jim's face.

"Jim," he tried to explain. "I thought you were _dead_. Shit." He rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. "I was drunk?"

It became blatantly obvious that he just said the exactly wrong thing. Jim took the burlap sack from Sebastian. "I'll put away the groceries."

"Right. Um, thanks." Sebastian mentally kicked himself, mouthed several vicious curses against his brain, and dropped onto the couch, trying to think of an apology. When Jim had finished with the groceries, a he had pieced a decent one together. He started talking, as not to lose it.

"Jim, you were an absolute bastard and I was an absolute bastard and I'm sorry."

"Well, that's touching."

"Ssshh." Sebastian raised his hand. "Not done yet." He cleared his throat, continued. "But that was a dumb-ass move of mine, because … I didn't exactly want to forget you. I just missed you too much to be able to deal with it. So I tried to stop missing you, instead of dealing with it."

_Shit_, he sounded like a girl. With a diary, a blog about her diary, and a fucking pet fucking unicorn. Oh well, at least Jim wasn't as pissed off as before. The criminal stood in front of Sebastian, who had his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Slowly, Jim crouched so his face was level with Sebastian's.

"That was …" Sebastian glanced up at Jim, half curious. "… quite possibly the most romantic thing I've heard you say out of bed."

Moran glared at him. "Not. Amusing."

"Well, now that you've destroyed that one, would you be interested in getting a proper one?"

Sebastian raised an eyebrow, his forehead wrinkled. "'Fraid I don't know what you're talking about, Jim. What was wrong with the last one?"

"It didn't have our real names on it, _idiot_." This last word was said in a more teasing tone, and then Moriarty ruffled Sebastian's hair before ungracefully sitting down on the couch next to him. "Now, do you want to make dinner or should I?"

"I'll do it," Sebastian said, as he stood. "I don't want you to burn the flat down after proposing."

_Did I just say the word proposing? Oh, hell, if the guys back in Afghanistan could see me now they'd have heart attacks laughing if I didn't shoot them first_. Sebastian pulled out some of the potatoes that he bought earlier and began to scrub them clean. _Roasted chicken would work_, he thought. _With mashed potatoes._

… _Oh, shit, Jim was right. I am going soft. _He shook his head vigorously as he skinned the potatoes. _No, this is not good._

But then Jim laughed at something on his phone, and Sebastian realized how warm and comfortable the flat was on a rainy night, and thought, _If this is going soft, maybe it isn't so bad_.

* * *

Oh my gods _I am not sorry for the title at all_.

Um. Companion piece to In Which John Watson Does Not Go On Dates With Detectives, contains a clue for the Easter Egg in that story. (Again, if you're one of the people who goes around reviewing stories, please don't give away the Easter Egg.)

Props to you if you figure out who I'm mentally casting as Sebastian Moran. (And yes, there is a hint about it in the John Watson fic.) PM me with the answer, and, if you're right, I'll give a long, in-depth review to a story of yours. (Again, do not post answer in a review, it spoils the fun for the other three people that might read this.)

And this is both the most verbose story I've written and the one that gets the closest to sex. And this is as close as I'm going to sex, because I do not like sex and (insert asexual gross-out here).

un-beta'd. I welcome criticism. Props to **taggianto **of tumblr and AO3 for allowing me to use her Sebastian-nickname-headcanon. (The nicknames do follow a pattern, she posted a ficlet about it on her tumblr.)


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